Can I blur screenshots so content is not readable?
Blurring happens on the computer before the image is sent, so the readable version never leaves it. You still see which application was open, just not what was in it.
Screenshots have three states, and the choice belongs to the organization: off, blurred, or as they are. The middle one is the setting most teams end up on.
What blurring does
The image is blurred on the employee's own computer, at the moment it is captured, before anything is uploaded. The readable version is never sent anywhere and is never stored. There is no setting that turns a blurred screenshot back into a sharp one, because the sharp one does not exist.
What survives is the shape of the screen: which application was open, how many windows, roughly what kind of work it was. What does not survive is the text. Names, messages, customer records and passwords in a form are not readable.
Turning it on
Open Organization settings, go to the Tracking tab and find the capture section. Blur screenshots sits under the switch that turns screenshots on at all.
The change reaches the computers on their next settings refresh, which takes about fifteen minutes. Screenshots captured before that stay as they were.
When each state makes sense
Off is right when screenshots add nothing you cannot get from the activity records, or when the work involves material nobody outside the team should see at all.
Blurred is right when you want evidence that work was happening without collecting what the work said. Teams handling customer data, medical records or legal documents usually land here.
Unblurred is right when the screenshot has to be readable to be useful, for example when disputes about what was delivered are the reason you turned tracking on in the first place. It is the most intrusive of the three and worth telling people about explicitly.
Blurring does not change anything else
Application names, website addresses, working and idle minutes are recorded the same way whichever state you pick. Blurring covers the picture only.
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